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OBITUARY ADDRESSES 



ON THE 



©ctasioit of lljc ^tdi\ 



OF THE 



HOxl DANIEL WEBSTER, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE UNITED STATES:' 

DELIVERED IN THE 

^nuit n)i in t\t j0usc at X^qxtmMllats at Ik 

initclr States, 

FO^lTEE^'T^ and FTFTEEXTH DECEMER, 1852. 



< 

WASHINGTON: - 

PRINTED BY ROBERT ARMSTRONG. 

1853. 



»- 



£7-340 



4 



«- 



•^ 



December 20, 1852. 



On motion by Mr. GwiN, 

Resolved, That the Committee on Printing cause to be 
published, and bound in pamphlet form, in such manner as 
may seem to them appropriate, for the use of the Senate, ten 
thousand copies of the addresses made by the Members of 
the Senate and Members of the House of Representatives, 
together with so much of the Message of the President of 
the United States, at the commencement of the Session, as 
relates to the Death of the Hon. Daniel Webster. 

Attest, 

ASBURY DiCKINS, 

Secretary. 



-« 



gcattj of i);uucl c^ciUbstcr. 



" Within a few weeks, the public mind has been deeply 
affected by the death of Daniel Webster, filling, at his 
decease, the ofEcc of Secretary of State. Ilis associates in 
the Executive Government have sincerely sympathized witli 
his family, and the public generally, on this mournful occa- 
sion. Ilis commanding talents, his great pohtical and pro- 
fessional eminence, his well-tried patriotism, and his long 
and faithful services in the most important public trusts, 
have caused his death to be lamented throughout the country, 
and have earned for him a lasting place in our history." 

\^Extraci from the FresidenCs Message. 



•ft 



•m 



dMim^ %^ktssts^ 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 

Tuesday, December 14, 1852. 

After various topics of the Message of the President had 
"been referred to the appropriate Committees, Mr. Davis 
rose, and addressed the Senate as follows : 

Mr. President : — I rise to bring to the notice of 
the Senate an event which has touched the sensi- 
biUties and awakened sympathies in all parts of the 
country — an event which has appropriately found a 
place in the message of the President, and ought 
not to be passed in silence by the Senate. Sir, we 
have, within a short space, mourned the death of a 
succession of men illustrious by their services, their 
talents, and worth. Not only have seats in this 
Chamber, in the other House, and upon the bench 
of the Court been vacated, but death has entered 
the Executive Mansion and claimed that beloved 
patriot who filled the Chair of State. 



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The portals of the tomb had scarcely closed upon 
the remains of a great and gifted member of this 
House, before they are again opened to receive 
another marked man of our day — one -who stood 
out with a singular prominence before his country- 
men, challenging, by his extraordinary intellectual 
power, the admiration of his fellow-men. 

Daniel Webster, (a name familiar in the re- 
motest cabin upon the frontier,) after mixing 
actively with the councils of his country for forty 
years, and having reached the limits of life" assigned 
to mortals, has descended to the mansions of the 
dead, and the damp earth now rests upon his 
manly form. 

That magic voice which was wont to fill this 
place with admiring listeners, is hushed in eternal 
silence. The multitude will no longer bend in 
breathless attention from the galleries to catch his 
words, and to watch the speaking eloquence of 
his countenance, animated hy the fervor of his 
mind ; nor will the Senate again be instructed by 
the outpourings of his profound intellect, matured 
by long experience, and enriched by copious 
streams from the fountains of knowledge. The 
thread of life is cut ; the immortal is separated 
from the mortal; and tlie products of a great and 
cultivated mind are all that remain to us of the 
jurist and legislator. 



-a 



Few men have attracted so large a share of 
pubUc attention, or maintained for so long a period 
an equal degree of mental distinction. In this 
and the other House there were rivals for fame, 
and he gTappled in debate with the master minds 
of the day, and achieved in such manly con- 
flict the imperishable renown connected with his 
name. 

Upon most of the questions which have been 
agitated in Congress during his period of service, 
his voice was heard. Few orators have equalled 
him in a masterly power of condensation, or in 
that clear logical arrangement of proofs and argu- 
ments which secures the attention of the hearer, 
and holds it with unabated interest. 

These speeches have been preserved, and many 
of them will be read as forensic models, and will 
command admiration for their great display of intel- 
lectual power and extensive research. This is not 
a suitable occasion to discuss the merits of political 
productions, or to compare them with the effusions 
of great contemporaneous minds, or to speak of the 
principles advocated. All this belongs to the*fu- 
ture, and history will assign each great name the 
measure of its enduring fiime. 

Mr. AVebster was conspicuous not only among 
the most illustrious men in the halls of legislation, 
but his fame shone with undiminished lustre in the 



8 

judicial tribunals as an advocate, where be parti- 
cipated in many of tbe most important discussions. 
On tbe bench were Marshall, Story, and their 
brethren — men of patient research and compre- 
hensive scope of intellect — who have left behind 
them, in our judicial annals, proofs of greatness 
which will secure profound veneration and respect 
for their names. At the bar stood Pinckney, Wirt, 
Emmett, and many others who adorned and gave 
exalted character to the profession. Amid these 
luminaries of the bar he discussed many of the 
great questions raised in giving construction to 
orGfanic law; and no one shone with more intense 
brightness, or brought into the conllict of mind 
more learning, higher proofs of severe mental dis- 
cipline, or more copious illustration. 

Amono; such men, and in such honorable combat, 
the foundations of that critical knowledge of consti- 
tutional law, which afterward became a prominent 
feature of his character, and entered largely into his 
opinions as a legislator, were laid. 

The arguments made at this forum displayed a 
careful research into the history of the formation of 
the Federal Union, and an acute analysis of the 
fundamental provisions of the Constitution. 

Prol)ably no man has penetrated deeper into the 
principles, or taken a more comprehensive and com- 
plete view of the Union of the States, than that great 



— » 



f ^ 

9 

man, Chief Justice Marshall. No question was so 
subtle as to elude his grasp, or so complex as to 
defy his penetration. Even the great and the learned 
esteemed it no condescension to listen to the teach- 
ings of his voice ; and no one profited more by his 
wisdom, or more venerated his character, than Mr. 
Webster. 

To stand among such men with marked distinc- 
tion, as did Mr. Webster, is an association which 
might satisfy any ambition, whatever might be its 
aspirations. But there, among those illustrious men, 
who have finished their labors and gone to their 
final homes, he made his mark strong and deep, 
which will be seen and traced by posterity. 

But I need not dwell on that which is familiar to 
all readers who feel an interest in such topics ; nor 
need I notice the details of his private life — since 
hundreds of pens have been emploj'ed in revealing 
all the facts, and in describing, in the most vivid 
manner, all the scenes which have been deemed 
attractive ; nor need I reiterate the fervent language 
of eulogy which has been poured out in all quarters 
from the press, the pulpit, the bar, legislative bodies, 
and public assemblies — since his own productions 
constitute his best eulogy. 

I could not, if I were to attempt it, add any thing 
to the strength or beauty of the manifold evidences 
which have been exhibited of the length, the 






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10 



breadth, and height of his fame; nor is there any 
occasion for such proofs in the Senate — the place 
where his face was familiar, where many of his 
greatest efforts were made, and where his intellec- 
tual powers were appreciated. Here he was seen 
and heard, and nowhere else will his claim to great 
distinction be more cheerfully admitted. 

But the places which have known him will know 
him no more ! His form will never rise here again ; 
his voice will not be heard, nor his expressive coun- 
tenance seen. He is dead. In his last moments he 
was surrounded by his family and friends at his own 
home; and, while consoled by their presence, his 
spirit took its flight to other regions. All that re- 
mained has been committed to its kindred earth. 

Divine Providence gives us illustrious men, but 
they, like others, when their mission is ended, j'ield 
to the inexorable law of our being. He who gives 
also takes away, but never forsakes his faithful 
children. 

The places of those possessing uncommon gifts 
are vacated, the sod rests upon the once manly 
form, now as cold and lifeless as itself, and the 
living are filled with gloom and desolation. But 
the world rolls on ; Nature loses none of its charms ; 
the sun rises with undiminished splendor; the grass 
loses none of its freshness; nor do the flowers 
cease to fill the air with fragrance. Nature, un- 



11 

touched by human woe, procLiims the immutable 
haw of Providence, that decay follows growth, and 
that He who takes away never foils to give. 

Sir, I propose the following resolutions, believing 
that they will meet the cordial approbation of the 
Senate : 

Resolved, That the Senate has received with profound 
sensibility the annunciation from the President of the death 
of the late Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, who was 
long a highly distinguished member of this body. 

Resolved, That the Senate will manifest its respect for 
the memory of the deceased, and its sympathy with his be- 
reaved family, by wearing the usual badge of mourning for 
thirty days. 

Resolved, That these proceedings be communicated to the 
House of Representatives. 

MR. BUTLER. 

Mr. President : — This is an occasion full of 

interesting but melancholy associations, and one 

that especially appeals to my feelings and sense of 

• 

justice — I might almost say historical justice — as a 
representative of South Carolina. Who, that were 
present, can ever forget the mournful and imposing 
occasion when Daniel Webster, whose eloquence 
and ability had given distinction to the greatest de- 
liberative assembly and the most august tribunal of 
justice in this great confederacy; and when Henry 
Clav — a name associated with all that is daring in 



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12 

action and splendid in eloquence — rose as M-itnosses 
before the tribunal of history, and gave their testi- 
mony as to the character and services of their illus- 
trious compeer, John Caldwell Calhoun ? They 
embalmed in historical immortality their rival, 
associate, and comrade. 

I would that I could borrow from the spirit of 
my great countryman something of its justice and 
magnanimity, that I might make some requital for 
the distinguished tributes paid to his memory by his 
illustrious compeers. Such an occasion as the one I 
have referred to, is without parallel in the history 
of this Senate ; and, sir, I fear that there is no future 
for such another one. Calhoun, Clay, and Webster 
— like Pitt, Fox, and Burke — have made a picture 
on our history that will be looked upon as its cul- 
minating splendor. They were luminaries that, in 
many points of view, essentially differed from each 
other, as one star differeth from another ; but they 
were all stars of the first magnitude. Distance can- 
not destroy, nor can time diminish the simple splen- 
' dor of their light for the guidance and instruction 
of an admiring posterity. 

liivals they were on a great and eventful theatre 
of political life ; but death has given them a com- 
mon fame. 

Eadem arena, 
Communis virtus, atque pcrcnnis dccus, 
Victrix causa parem meritis ct victa favorem 
Yindicat, a;tcruum vivcre fama dodit. 



f- 



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Their contest in life was for the awards of pubUc 
opinion — the great lever in modern times by which 
nations are to be moved. 



"Witb more tlian mortal powers cndow'd, 
How high they soar'd above the crowd ! 
Theirs was no common party race, 
Jostling by dark intrigue for place : 
Like fabled gods, their mighty war 
Shook realms and nations in its jar !" 



Before I became a member of the Senate, of 
which I found Mr. Webster a distinguished ornar 
ment, I had formed a very high estimate of his 
abilities — and from various sources of high autho- 
rity. His mind, remarkable for its large capacity, 
was enriched with rare endowments — with the 
knowledge of a statesman, the learning of a jurist, 
and the attainments of a scholar. In this Cham- 
ber, with unsurpassed ability, Mr. Webster has dis- 
cussed the greatest subjects that have influenced, or 
can influence, the destinies of this great confede- 
racy. Well may I apply to him the striking re- 
mark which he bestowed on Mr. Calhoun: "We 
saw before us a senator of Rome, when Eome sur- 
vived." 

I have always regarded Mr. Webster as a noljle 
model of a parliamentary debater. His genial tern 
per, the courtesy and dignity of his deportment, his 
profound knowledge of his subject, and his thorough 



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14 

preparation, not only gave him a great command 
over his immediate audience, but gave his masterly 
speeches an impressive influence upon public opinion. 

In the Supreme Court, Mr. Webster was engaged 
in the greatest cases that were ever decided by that 
tribunal; and it is not saying too much to assert 
that his arguments formed the basis of some of the 
ablest judgments of that court. His exuberant but 
rectified imagination, and brilliant literary attain- 
ments, imparted to his eloquence beauty, simplicity, 
and majesty, and the finish of taste and elaboration. 
He seemed to prefer the more deliberative style of 
speaking; but, when roused and assailed, he became 
a formidable adversary in the war of debate, dis- 
charging from his full quiver the arrows of sarcasm 
and invective with telling eflfect. 

Mr. Webster was born in a forest, and, in his 
childhood and youth, lived amid the scenes of rural 
lilc ; and it was no doubt under their insioiring in- 
ihience that he imbibed that love of Nature which 
has given such a charm and touching pathos to some 
of his meditative productions. It always struck me 
that he had something of'Burns's nature, but con- 
trolled by the discipline of a higher education. 
Lifted above the ordinary level of mankind by his 
genius and intelligence, Mr. Webster looked upon 
a more extensive horizon than could be seen by 
those below him. He had too much information, 
from his large and varied intercourse with ureat 



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15 

men, and his acquaintance with the opinions of all 
ages through the medium of books, to allow the 
spirit of bigotry to have a place in his mind. I 
have many reasons to conclude that he was not only 
tolerant of the opinions of others, but was even 
generous in his judgments toward them. I will con- 
clude by saying that New England, especially, and 
the confederacy at large, have cause to be proud of 
the fame of such a man. 

MR. CASS. 

Mr. President : — How are the mighty fallen ! 
was the pathetic lamentation when the leaders of 
Israel were struck down in the midst of their ser- 
vices and of their renown. Well may we repeat 
that national wail. How are the mighty fallen! 
when the impressive dispensations of Providence 
have so recently carried mourning to the hearts of 
the American people, by summoning from life to 
death three of their eminent citizens, Avho, for almost 
half a century, had taken part — and prominently, 
too — in all the great questions, as well of peace as 
of Avar, which agitated and divided their country. 
Full, indeed, they were of days and of honors, for 

" The hand of the reaper 
Took the ears that were hoary,' ' 

but never brighter in intellect, purer in patriotism, 
nor more powerful in influence, than when the grave 



— ^ 



16 

closed upon their labors, leaving tlieir memory and 
tlieir career at once an incentive and an example 
for their countrymen in that long course of trial — 
but I trust of freedom and prosperitj', also — which 
is open before us. Often divided in life, but only by 
honest convictions of duty, followed in a spirit of 
generous emulation, and not of personal opposition, 
they are now united in death, and we may appro- 
priately adopt, upon this striking occasion, the beau- 
tiful language addressed to the people of England 
by one of her most gifted sons, when they were 
called to mourn, as we are called now, a bereave- 
ment which spread sorrow — disma}' almost — through 
the nation, and under circumstances of difficulty and 
of danger ftir greater than any we can now reason- 
ably anticipate in the progress of our history: 

" Seek not for those a separate doom, 
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb; 
But search the land of living men: 
Where shall we find their like again ?'' 

And to-day, in the consideration of the message 
of the Chief Magistrate, it becomes us to respond to 
his anmniciation — commending itself, as it does, to 
the universal sentiment of the country — of the death 
ul' till' last ol' these huneiitcd statesmen, as a national 
misfortune. This mark of respect and regret was 
due alike to the memory of the dead and to the feel- 



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17 

ings of the living. And I have listened ^vith deep 
emotion to the eloquent testimonials to the mental 
power, and worth, and services of the departed pa- 
triot, which to-day have been heard in this high 
place, and will be heard to-morrow, and commended, 
too, by the American people. The voice of party is 
hushed in the presence of such a national calamity, 
and the grave closes upon the asperity of political 
contests when it closes upon those who have taken 
part in them. And well may we, who have so often 
witnessed his labors and hi§i triumphs — well ma}'^ 
we, here, upon this theatre of his services and his 
renown, recalling the efforts of his mighty under- 
standing, and the admiration which always followed 
its exertion — well may we come with our tribute of 
acknowledgment to his high and diversified powers, 
and to the influence he exercised upon his auditory, 
and, in fact, upon his country. He was, indeed, one 
of those remarkable men who stand prominently 
forward upon the canvas of history, impressing 
their characteristics upon the age in which they 
live, and almost making it their own by the force 
of their genius and by the splendor of their fame. 
The time which elapsed between the middle of the 
eighteenth century and our own day was prolific of 
great events and of distiniruished men, who auided 
or were guided by them, far beyond any other equal 
period in the history of human society. But, in my 
opinion, even this favored epoch has produced no 



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man possessing a more massive and gigantic intel- 
lect, or who exhibited more profound powers of in- 
vestigation in the great department of political 
science to which he devoted himself, in all its va- 
rious ramifications, than Daniel Webster. 

The structure of his mind seemed peculiarly 
adapted to the work he was called upon to do, and 
he did it as no other man of his country — of his age, 
indeed — could have done it. And liis name and his 
fame are indissolubly connected with some of the 
most difficult and important questions which our pe- 
culiar institutions have called into discussion. It 
was my good fortune to hear him upon one of the 
most memorable of these occasions, when, ui this 
very hall, filled to overflowing with an audience 
whose rapt attention indicated his power and their 
expectations, he entered into an analysis of the Con- 
stitution, and of the great principles of our political 
organization, with a vigor of argument, a force of 
illustration, and a felicity of diction, which have 
rendered this ellbrt of his mind one of the proudest 
monuments of American genius, and one of the no- 
blest expositions which the operations of our govern- 
ment have called forth. I speak of its general eflect, 
without concurring in all the views he presented, 
though the points of diflerence neither impair my 
estimate of the speaker nor of the power he dis- 
played ill this elaborate debate. 

The judgment of his contemporaries upon the cha- 



19 

racter of his eloquence will be confirmed by the fu- 
ture historian. He grasped the questions involved 
in the subject before him with a rare union of force 
and discrimination, and he presented them in an 
order of arrangement, marked at once with great 
perspicuity and with logical acuteness, so that, when 
he arrived at his conclusion, he seemed to reach it 
by a process of established propositions, interwoven 
with the hand of a master; and topics, barren of 
attraction, from their nature, were rendered inte- 
resting by illustrations and allusions, drawn from a 
vast storehouse of knowledge, and applied with a 
chastened taste, formed upon the best models of an- 
cient and of modern learning; and to these eminent 
qualifications was added an uninterrupted flow of 
rich and often racy old-fashioned English, worthy of 
the earlier masters of the language, whom he studied 
and admired. 

As a statesman and politician his power was felt 
and acknowledged through the republic, and all bore 
willing testimony to his enlarged views, and to his 
ardent patriotism. And he acquired a European 
reputation by the state-papers he prepared upon 
various questions of our foreign policy ; and one of 
these — his refutation and exposure of an absurd and 
arrogant pretension of Austria — is distinguished b}- 
lofty and generous sentiments, becoming the age in 
which he lived, and the great people in whose name 
he spoke, and is stamped with a vigor and research 



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20 

not less honorable in the exhibition than conclusive 
in the application; and it will ever take rank in the 
history of diplomatic intercourse among the richest 
contributions to the commentaries upon the public 
law of the world. And in internal as in external 
troubles he was true, and tried, and faithful ; and in 
the latest, may it be the last, as it was the most 
perilous, crisis of our country, rejecting all sectional 
considerations, and exposing himself to sectional de- 
nunciation, he stood up boldly-, proudly, indeed, and 
with consummate ability, for the constitutional 
rights of another portion of the Union, fiercely as- 
sailed by a spirit of aggression, as incompatible with 
our mutual oblisxations as with the duration of the 
confederation itself In that dark and doubtful 
liour, his voice was heard above the storm, recalling 
his countrymen to a sense of their dangers and 
their duties, and tempering the lessons of reproof 
with the experience of age and the dictates of pa- 
triotism. 

He who heard his memorable appeal to the public 
reason and conscience, made in this crowded Cham- 
Ijcr, with all eyes fixed upon the speaker, and 
almost all hearts swayed by his words of wisdom 
and of power, will sedulously guard its recollections 
as one of tho.se precious incidents which, while they 
constitute the poetr}' of history, exert a permanent 
and decisive iniluence upon the destiny of nations. 

And our deceased colleauue added the kindlier 



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21 

affections of the heart to the lofty endowments of 
the mind; and I recall, with almost painful sensi- 
bility, the associations of our boyhood, when we 
were school-fellow^s together, with all the troubles 
and the pleasures which belong to that relation of 
life, in its narrow world of preparation. He ren- 
dered himself dear by his disposition and deport- 
ment, and exhibited some of those peculiar charac- 
teristic features, which, later in life, made him the 
ornament of the social circle ; and, when study and 
knowledge of the world had ripened his faculties, 
endowed him with powers of conversation I have 
not found surpassed in my intercourse wdth society, 
at home or abroad. His conduct and bearing at 
that early period have left an enduring impression 
upon my memory of mental traits, which his subse- 
quent course in life developed and confirmed. And 
the commanding position and ascendency of the man 
were foreshadowed by the standing and influence of 
the boy among the comrades who surrounded him. 
Fifty-five years ago we parted — he to prepare for his 
splendid career in the good old land of our ances- 
tors, and I to encounter the rough toils and trials of 
life in the great forest of the "West. But, ere long, 
the report of his words and his deeds penetrated 
those recesses, where human industry was painfully, 
but successfully, contending with the obstacles of 
Nature, and I found that my early companion was 
assuming a position which confirmed my previous. 



f 

22 

anticipations, and which could only be attained by 
the rare faculties M'ith which he was gifted. Since 
then he has gone on irradiating his path with the 
splendor of his exertions, till the whole hemisphere 
was bright with his glory, and never brighter than 
when he went down in the West, without a cloud to 
obscure his lustre, calm, clear, and glorious. Fortu- 
nate in life he was not 'less fortunate in death, for he 
died with his fame undiminished, his faculties un- 
broken, and his usefulness unimpaired ; surrounded 
by weeping friends, and regarded with anxious solici- 
tude by a grateful country, to whom the messenger 
that mocks at time and space told, from hour to hour, 
the progress of his disorder, and the approach of his 
fate. And beyond all this, he died in the faith of a 
Christian, humble, but hopeful, adding another to the 
roll of eminent men who have searched the Gospel of 
Jesus, and have found it the word and the will of God, 
given to direct us while here, and to sustain us in that 
hour of trial, when the things of this world are passing 
away, and the dark valley of the shadow of death 
is opening before us. 

lluw ai:e the mighty fallen! we may yet ex- 
claim, when refb of our greatest and wisest; but 
tlioy fall to rise again from death to life, when sucli 
(juickening faith in the mercy of God and in the 
sacrifice of the Redeemer comes to shed upon them 
its hai)i)y inlluence, on this side of the grave and 
beyond it. 



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23 

MR. SE^YARD. 

When, in passing through Savoy, I reached the 
eminence where the traveller is promised his first 
distinct view of Mont Blanc, I asked, "Where is 
the mountain?" "There," said the guide, pointing 
to the rainy sky which stretched out before me. It 
is even so when we approach and attempt to scan 
accurately a great character. Clouds gather upon 
it, and seem to take it up out of our sight. 

Daniel Webster was a man of warm and earnest 
aftections in all the domestic and social relations. 
Purely incidental and natural allusions in his con- 
versations, letters, and speeches, have made us fami- 
liar with the very pathways about his early moun- 
tain home; with his mother, graceful, intellectual, 
fond, and pious ; witli his father, assiduous, patriotic, 
and religious, changing his pursuits, as duty in revo- 
lutionary times commanded, from the farm to the 
camp, and from the camp to the provincial legisla- 
ture and the constituent assembly. It seems as if 
we could recognise the very form and features of 
the most constant and generous of brothers. Nor 
are we strangers at Marshfield. We are guests hos- 
pitably admitted, and then left to wander at our 
ease under the evergreens on the lawn, over the 
grassy fields, through the dark, native forest, and 
along the resounding sea-shore. We know, almost 
as well as we know our own, the children reared 



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24 

there, and fondly loved, and therefore, perhaps, early 
lost; the servants hought from bondage, and held 
by tlie stronger chains of gratitude ; the careful 
steward, always active, yet never hurried ; the re- 
verent neighbor, always welcome, yet never obtru- 
sive ; and the ancient fisherman, whose little fleet is 
ever ready for the sports of the sea ; and we meet 
on every side the watchful and devoted friends 
whom no frequency of disappointment can discou- 
rage, and whom even the death of their great patron 
cannot all at once disen2;aG;e from efforts wdiicli 
know no balancing of probabilities nor reckoning of 
cost to secure his elevation to the first honors of the 
republic. 

Who that was even confessedly provincial was 
ever so identified with any thing local as Daniel 
Webster was with the spindles of Lowell, and the 
quarries of Quincy ; with Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, 
Forefiithers' Day, Plymouth Rock, and whatever 
also belonged to Massachusetts? And yet, who 
that was most truly national has ever so sublimely 
celebrated, or so touchinu-lv commended to our re- 
veront allcction our broad and ever-broadening con- 
tinental home; its endless rivers, majestic moun- 
tains, and capacious lakes ; its inimitable and inde- 
scribable constitution; its cherished and growing 
capital ; its aptly conceived and expressive Hag, and 
its triumphs by land and sea; and its immortal 



-8) 



f- 



25 

founders, heroes, and martyrs ! How manifest it 
was, too, that, unHke those who are impatient of 
slow but sure progress, he loved his country, not 
for something greater or higher than he desired or 
hoped she might be, but just for what she was, and 
as she was already, regardless of future change. 

No, sir; believe me, they err widely who say that 
Daniel Webster was cold and passionless. It is 
true that he had little enthusiasm; but he was, 
nevertheless, earnest and sincere, as well as calm; 
and, therefore, he was both discriminating and com- 
prehensive in his affections. We recognise his like- 
ness in the portrait drawn by a Roman pencil : 

" wbo with nice discernment knows 



What to his country and his friends he owes j 
How various Nature warms the human breast, 
To love the parent, brother, friend, or guest, 
"What the great offices of judges are, 
Of senators, of generals sent to war." 



Daniel Webster was cheerful, and on becoming 
occasions joyous, and even mirthful ; but he was 
habitually engaged in profound studies on great 
aflairs. He was, moreover, constitutionally fearful 
of the dangers of popular passion and prejudice ; 
and so, in public walk, conversation, and debate, he 
was grave and serious, even to solemnity; yet he 
never desponded in the darkest hours of personal or 



—9 



26 

iiolitical trial ; and melancholy never, in health nor 
even in sickness, spread a pall over his spirits. 

It must have been very early that he acquired 
that just estimate of his own powers which was the 
Ijasis of a self-reliance which all the world saw and 
approved, and which, while it betrayed no feature 
of vanity, none but a superficial observer could have 
mistaken for pride or arrogance. 

Daniel ^yEBSTER was no sophist. With a talent 
for didactic instruction which midit have excused 
dogmatism, he never lectured on the questions of 
morals that are agitated in the schools. But he 
seemed, nevertheless, to have acquired a philosophy 
of his own, and to have made it the rule and guide 
of his life. That philosophy consisted in improving 
his powers and his tastes, so that he might appre- 
ciate whatever was good and beautiful in nature 
and art, and attain to whatever was excellent in 
conduct. He had accurate perceptions of the quali- 
ties and relations of things. He overvalued nothinii 
that was common, and undervalued nothing that 
was useful, or even ornamental. His lands, his 
cattle, and equipage, his dwelling, library, and ap- 
parel, his letters, arguments, and orations — every 
thing that he had, every thing that he made, and 
every thing that he did — was, as far as possible, 
iit, complete, perfect. He thought decorous forms 
necessary for preserving whatever was substantial 



4 



•» 



27 

or valuable in politics and morals, and even in reli- 
gion. In his regard, order was the first law, and 
peace the chief blessing of earth, as they are of 
Heaven. Therefore, while he desired justice and 
loved liberty, he reverenced law as the first divinity 
of states and of society. 

Daniel Webster was, indeed, ambitious ; but his 
ambition was generally subordinate to conventional 
forms, and always to the Constitution. He aspired 
to place and preferment, but not for the mere 
exercise of political power, and still less for plea- 
surable indulgences ; and only for occasions to save 
or serve his country, and for the fame which such 
noble actions might bring. Who will censure such 
ambition? Who had greater genius subjected to 
severer discipline? What other motives than those 
of ambition could have brought that genius into 
activity under that discipline, and sustained that 
activity so equally under ever-changing circum- 
stances so long? His ambition never fell off into 
presumption. He was, on the contrary, content 
with performing all practical duties, even in com- 
mon affairs, in the best possible manner; and he 
never chafed under petty restraints from those 
above, nor malicious annoyances from those around 
him. If ever any man had intellectual superiority 
which could have excused a want of deference due 
to human authority, or skepticism concerning that 



28 



which was di\'ine, he was such a one. Yet he was, 
nevertheless, unassuming and courteous, here and 
elsewhere, in the public councils ; and there was, I 
think, never a time in his life when he was not an 
unquestioning believer in that religion which offers 
to the meek the inheritance of the heavenly 
kingdom. 

Daniel Webster's mind was not subtle, but it 
was clear. It was surpassingly logical in the ex- 
ercise of induction, and equally vigorous and ener- 
getic in all its movements ; and yet he possessed an 
imagination so strong that if it had been combined 
with even a moderated enthusiasm of temper, 
would have overturned the excellent balance of 
his powers. 

The civilian rises in this, as in other republics, 
by the practice of eloquence ; and so Daxiel AVeb- 
STER became an orator — the first of orators. 

Whatever else concerning him has been contro- 
verted by anybody, the fifty thousand lawyers of 
the United States, interested to deny his preten- 
sions, conceded to him an unapproachable supre- 
macy at the bar. How did he win tliat high place? 
Where others studied laboriouslv, he meditated in- 
tensely. Where others appealed to the prejudices 
and passions of courts and juries, he addressed only 
their understandings. Where others lost them- 
selves among the streams, he ascended to the foun- 



■« 



29 



tain. "While tliey sought the rules of law among 
coiillictiiig precedents, he found them in the eternal 
principles of reason and justice. 

But it is conceding too much to the legal pro- 
fession to call Daniel Webster a lawyer. Law- 
yers speak for clients and their interests — he 
seemed always to be speaking for his country and 
for truth. So he rose imperceptibly above his pro- 
fession; and while yet in the Forum, he stood 
before the world a Publicist. In this felicity, he 
resembled, while he surpassed, Erskine, who taught 
the courts at Westminster the law of moral re- 
sponsibility; and he approached Hamilton, who 
educated the courts at Washington in the Con- 
stitution of their country and the philosophy of 
government. 

An undistinguishable line divides this high pro- 
vince of the Forum from the Senate, to which his 
philosophy and eloquence were perfectly adapted. 
Here, in times of stormy agitation and bewilder- 
ing excitement, when as yet the Union of these 
States seemed not to have been cemented and con- 
solidated, and its dissolution seemed to hang, if not 
on the immediate result of the debate, at least upon 
the popular passion that that result must generate, 
Daniel Webster put forth his mightiest efforts — 
confessedly the greatest ever put forth here or on 
this continent. Those efforts produced marked 



(8,— 



Q 







effect on the Senate; they soothed the public mind, 
and became enduring lessons of instruction to our 
countrj'raen on the science of constitutional law, 
and the relative powers and responsibilities of the 
government, and the rights and duties of the States 
and of citizens. 

Tried by ancient definitions, Daniel TVebster 
"was not an orator. He studied no art and prac- 
tised no action. Nor did he form himself by 
any admitted model. He had neither the di- 
rectness and vehemence of Demosthenes, nor the 
fulness nor flow of Cicero, nor the intenseness of 
Milton, nor the magnificence of Burke. It was 
happy for him that he had not. The temper and 
tastes of his age and country required eloquence 
different from all these, and they found it in 
the pure logic and the vigorous yet massive 
rhetoric which constituted the style of Daniel 
Werster. 

Daniel Webster, althoudi a statesman, did not 
aim to be either a popular or a parliamentary 
leader. He left common affairs and (juestions to 
others, and reserved himself for those great and 
infrequent occasions which seemed to involve the 
pros})erity or the continuance of the republic. 
On these occasions he rose above partisan influences 
and alliances, and gave his counsels earnestly, and 
"witli impassioned solemnity, and always Avith an 



-f 



31 

unaffected reliance upon the intelligence and virtue 
of his countrymen. 

The first revolutionary assembly that convened 
in Boston promulgated the principle of the revolu- 
tion of 16 88 — " Resistance to unjust laws is obe- 
dience to God ;" and it became the watchword 
throughout the colonies. Under that motto the 
colonies dismembered the British Empire, and 
erected the American Republic. At an early day, 
it seemed to Daniel Webster that the habitual 
cherishing of that principle, after its great work 
had been consummated, threatened to subvert, in 
its turn, the free and beneficent Constitution, which 
afforded the highest attainable security against the 
passage of unjust laws. He addressed himself 
therefore assiduously, and almost alone, to what 
seemed to him the duty of calling the American 
people back from revolutionary theories to the 
formation of habits of peace, order, and submission 
to authority. He inculcated the duty of submis- 
sion by States and citizens to all laws passed within 
the province of constitutional authority, and of abso- 
lute reliance on constitutional remedies for the cor- 
rection of all errors and the redress of all injustice. 
This was the political gospel of Daxiel Webster. 
He preached it in season and out of season, boldly, 
constantly, witli the zeal of an apostle, and with 
the devotion, if there were need, of a martyr. It 



-s 



32 

M'as full of saving influences Avliile be lived, and 
those influences will last so long as the Constitution 
and the Union shall endure. 

I do not dwell on D.ajsiel "Webster's exercise 
of administrative functions. It was marked by the 
same ability that distinguished all his achievements 
in other fields of duty. It was at the same time 
eminently conservative of peace, and of the great 
principles of constitutional liberty, on which the 
republican institutions of his country were founded. 
But while those administrative services benefited 
his countr}^, and increased his fame, we all felt, 
nevertheless, that his proper and highest place was 
here, where there was field and scope for his philo- 
sophy and his eloquence — here, among the equal 
representatives of equal States, which were at once 
to be held together, and to be moved on in the esta- 
blishment of a continental power controlling all the 
American States, and balancing those of the Eastern 
world ; and we could not but exclaim, in the words 
of the Eoman orator, when we saw him leave 
the legislative councils to enter on the office of 
administration — 

Quantis in augustiis, vestra gloria se dilitari velit. 

MR. STOCKTON. 

Mh. Pkesident: — I was prevented from coming 
to Washington until this morning. After travelling 



-D 



oo 
GO 



all niglit, I hastened here to take my seat, wholly 
unapprized of the intention of the senator from 
Massachusetts to introduce the resolutions now be- 
fore the Senate. 

It would, therefore, not become me, nor the so- 
lemnity of the occasion, to mingle, unprepared as I 
needs must be, my voice in the eloquent lamenta- 
tion which does honor to the Senate, for any other 
purpose than merely briefly to express my grief— 
my sorrow — my heartfelt, unaffected sorrow — for 
the death of Daniel Webster. 

Senators, I have known and loved Daniel Web- 
ster for thirty years. What wonder, then, I sor- 
row? But now that I am on my feet for that pur- 
pose — and the Senate, who knew and loved him 
too, are my listeners — how am I to express that 
sorrow ? I cannot do it. It cannot be done. Oh ! 
sir, all words, in moments such as these, when love 
or grief seek utterance, are vain and frigid. 

Senators, I can even now hardly realize the event 
— that Daniel Webster is dead — that he does not 
"stin liver 

I did hope that God — who has watched over this 
republic — who can do all things — "who hung the 
Earth on nothing" — who so endowed the mind 
of Daniel Webster — would still longer have up- 
held its frail tenement, and kept him as an ex- 
ample to our own men, and to the men of the whole 

world. 

3 



-S 



34 

Indeed, it is no figure of speech, when we say that 
7fis fame was "world-wide." 

But, senators, I have risen to pronounce no eulogy 
on him. I am up for no such vain purpose. I come 
with no ceremony. I come to the portals of his 
grave, stricken with sadness — before the assembled 
Senate — in the presence of friends and senators — 
(for whether they be of this side of the Chamber or 
the other side of the Chamber, I hope I am entitled 
to call every senator my friend) — to mingle my grief 
with the grief of those around me. But I cherish 
no hope of adding one gravel-stone to the colossal 
column he has erected for himself. I would only 
l)lace a garland of friendship on the bier of one of 
the greatest and best men I ever knew. 

Senators, you have known Mr. "Webster in his 
public character — as a statesman of almost intuitive 
perceptions — as a lawyer of unsurpassed learning 
and ability — as a ripe and general scholar. But it 
was my happiness to know him, also, as a man in 
the seclusion of private life; and in the performance 
of sacred domestic duties, and of those of reciprocal 
friendship, I say, in this presence, and as for as my 
voice may reach, that he was remarkable for all 
those attributes Avhich constitute a generous, mag- 
nanimous, courageous, hospitable, and high-minded 
mail. Sir. as far as my researches into the history 
of the world have gone, they have failed to discover 
Ill's superior. Not even on the records of ancient 



I)- 



35 

Greece, or Rome, or of any other nation, are to be 
found the traces of a man of superior endowments to 
our own Webster. 

Mr. President, in private Hfe he was a man of 
pure and noble sentiments, and eminently kind, so- 
cial, and agreeable. He was generous to a fault. 
Sir, one act of his, one speech of his, made in this 
Chamber — placed him before all men of antiquity. 
He offered himself— yes, you all remember, in that 
seat tliere, he rose and offered himself a living sacri- 
fice for his country. And Lord Bacon has said, that 
he Avho offers himself as a sacrifice for his country, 
is a sight for angels to look upon. 

Mr. President, my feelings on this occasion will 
not surprise senators, who remember that these are 
no new sentiments for me — that when he was liv- 
ing, I had the temerity to say that Daniel Webster 
was the greatest among men, and a true patriot — 
ay, sir ! when the expression of such opinions 
might have interfered with political aspirations im- 
puted to me. Well, sir, if an empire had then been 
hanging on my w^ords, I would not have amended 
or altered one sentiment. 

Having said thus much for the dead, allow me to 
express a word of thanks to the honorable senator 
from Michigan, (Mr. Cass.) Sir, I have often had 
occasion to feel sentiments of regard, and, if he will 
permit me to say it, of affectionate regard for him, 
and sometimes to express them ) but the emotions 



fx- 



36 

created in my heart by liis address tliis morning are 
not easily expressed. I thank him — in the fuhiess 
of my heart I thank him ; and may God spare him 
to our country many years. May he long remain 
here, in our midst, as he is at this day, in all the 
strength of manhood, and in all the glory of matured 
wisdom. 



(». 



-S) 



37 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

Wednesday, December 15, 1852. 

The Journal having been read, 

A message was received from the Senate by the hands 
of AsBURY DiCKiNS, Esq., its Secretary, which, upon re- 
quest of Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, was read, as follows : 

Resolved, That the Senate has received with profound 
sensibility the i^nnunciation from the President of the death 
of the late Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, who was 
long a highly distinguished member of this body. 

Resolved, That the Senate will manifest its respect for 
the memory of the deceased, and its sympathy with his 
bereaved family, by wearing the usual badge of mom-ning 
for thirty days. 

Resolved, That these proceedings be communicated to the 
House of Representatives. 



MR. DAVIS. 

Mr. Speaker : — I rise for the purpose of pro- 
posing some action of this House in response to that 
which, we learn, has taken place in the Senate in 
reference to the death of Mr. Webster ; and I have 
little to add to the proposition itself beyond a brief 
expression of reverence and of affectionate recollec- 



38 

tion. At this seat of government, -where thirty 
years of Mr. Webster's life were spent — in this Capi- 
tol, still populous with the echoes of his voice — to 
this House, of which there is not an individual 
member but can trace something of his intellectual 
wealth, or political faith, to the fountain of that 
mighty intellect — it would be useless, and worse, to 
l)ass in review the various acts of spoken and writ- 
ten thought by which he impressed himself mcfface- 
ably upon his time. Master of the great original 
ideas of which our social institutions are but the 
coarse material expression ; master of a style Avhicli 
clothed each glorious thought in a garb of appro- 
priate beauty; possessed of a conquering nature, 
that, " like the west wind, brought the sunshine 
with it," and gave us, wherever he was, the sense of 
security and power, he has run his appointed race, 
and has left us to feel that our dav of life will 
henceforth be more wintry now that that light has 
been withdrawn. 

" ]Jut he was ours. And may that word of pride 
Drown, with its lofty tone, pain's bitter cry I" 

I have no intention of undertaking here to mea- 
sure his labors or interpret his ideas; but I feel 
tempted to say that his great held of action — the 
gre:it(^st wliich any statesman can have — was in 
undertaking to ap})ly general principles to an artih- 
cial and complicated system; to reconcile liberty 



®«- 



39 

with law; to work out the advance of liberty and 
civilization through and under the rules of law and 
government; to solve that greatest problem of hu- 
man government, how much of the ideal may safely 
be let into the practical. 

He sought these objects, and he sought the po- 
litical power which would enable him to carry out 
these objects, and he threw into the struggle the 
great passions of a great nature — the quidquid vidt, 
rahle vidt of the elder Brutus. He sought, and not 
unsuccessfully, to throw around the cold impersonal 
idea of a constitution the halo of love and reverence 
which in the Old World gathers round the dynas- 
ties of a thousand years; for, in the attachment 
thus created, he thought he saw the means of safety 
and permanence for his country. His lai^e expe- 
rience and broad forecast gave him notice of na- 
tional dangers which all did not see, as the w^res of 
the electric telegraph convey news of startling im- 
port, unknown to the slumbering villages through 
which they pass. \ Whether his fears were well or 
ill-founded, the future, the best guardian of his fame, 
will show; but, whether well or ill-founded, matters 
nothing now to him. He has passed through the 
last and sternest trial, which he has himself in 
anticipation described in words never to be for- 
gotten : 

"One may live (said he) as a conqueror, a hero, 
or a magistrate, but he must die as a man. The 



#• 



40 

bed of death brings every human being to his pure 
individuahty; to the intense contemphition of that, 
the deepest and most solemn of all relations — the 
relation between the creature and his Creator. 
Here it is that fame and renown cannot assist 
us ; that all external things must fail to aid us ; 
that friends, affection, and human love and devoted- 
ness cannot succor us. This relation, the true 
foundation of all duty — a relation perceived and 
felt by conscience and confirmed by revelation — our 
illustrious friend, now deceased, always acknow- 
ledged, lie reverenced thes Scripture of truth, 
honored the pure morality which they teach, and 
clung to the hopes of future life which they impart." 
Mr. Webster died in accordance with the pre- 
vailing sentiment of his life, in the spirit of prayer 
to God, and of love to man. Well might the nation 
that watched his dying bed say, in the words which 
the greatest English poet applies to a legendary hero 
who also had been the stay of his country- in peril : 

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise or blame : nothing bit well and fair, 
And what may co.mfort us in a death so noble. 

Mr. Speaker, I move the following resolves : 

liesolvcd, That this House concurs with the Senate in its 
expression of grief for the death of Daniel "Webster, of 
respect for his memory, ami of estimation of the services 
whicli he rendered to his country. 



-s 



41 

Resolved, That the members of this House vrill wear crape 
on the left arm for the space of thirty days. 

Resolved, That the Speaker be requested to make these 
resolves known to the surviving relatives of the deceased. 

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn. 

MR. APPLETON, of Maine. 

Mr. Speaker : — I do not know that I ought to 
add any thing to what has already been said upon 
the resolutions before us; yet, since the death of 
Mr. Webster was a national calamity, it is fit that 
all classes and all parties in the community should 
unite to testify their full appreciation of it. The 
people themselves have admonished us of this, as 
they have gathered recently with mournful reve- 
rence around his tomb ; and we should be unworthy 
of them, if, here . in the Capitol, where he won so 
much of his fame, we did not add our tribute to his 
memory. It is a great memory, sir, and will go 
down to posterity, as one of the country's heir- 
looms, through I know not how many successive 
generations. We are not here, Mr. Speaker, to 
build his monument. He builded that for himself 
before he died ; and had he failed to do so, none 
among us could supply the deficiency. We are 
here, rather, to recognise his labors, and to inscribe 
the marble with his name. 

That we have not all sympathized with him in 



«• 






42 

his jDolitical doctrines, or been ready to sanction 
every transaction of his public hfe, need not. and, 
I am sure, does not, abate any thing from our 
respect for his services, or our regret for his loss. 
His character and his works — what he was and 
what he did — constitute a legacy which no sound- 
hearted American can contemplate without emo- 
tions of gratitude and pride. There is enough of 
Daniel Webster, sir, to furnish a common ground 
upon which all his countrymen can mingle their 
hearty tributes to his memory. 

lie was a man to be remarked anywhere. 
Among a harharous people he would have excited 
reverence hy his very look and mien. Xo one 
could stand before him M'ithout knowing that he 
stood in a majestic presence, and admiring those 
lineaments of greatness with whicji his Creator had 
enstamped, in a manner not to be mistaken, his 
outward form. If there ever was such an instance 
on earth, his was the appearance described by the 
creat dramatist : — 

The combination and the form indeed, 
"Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man. 



No one could listen to him in his happier mo- 
ments, without feeling his spirit stirred within 



43 

him by those deep, cathedral tones which were 
the fit vehicles of his grave and earnest thoughts. 

No one can read his writings without being 
struck by the wonderful manner in which they 
unite a severe simplicity of style with great warmth 
of fancy, and great affluence of diction. 

We, Mr. Speaker, remember his look and his 
spoken words ; but by those who are to come after 
us he will be chiefly known through that written 
eloquence which is gathered in our public records, 
and enshrined among the pages of his published 
works. By these, at least, he still lives, and by 
these, in my judgment, he will continue to live, 
after these pillars shall have fallen, and this Capitol 
shall have crumbled into ruin. Demosthenes has 
survived the Parthenon, and Tully still pleads be- 
fore the world the cause of Roman culture and 
Roman oratory ; but there is nothing, it seems to 
me, either in Tully or in Demosthenes, Avhich, for 
conception, or language, or elevation of sentiment, 
can exceed some passages in the writings which 
remain of Daxiel Webster. His fame, indeed, is 
secure, for it is guarded by his own works ; and as 
he himself said of Mr. Calhoun, " he has lived long 
enough — he has done enough, and he has done 
it so well, so successfully, so honorably, as to 
connect himself for all time with the records of 
his country." 



u 

In no respect, Mr. Speaker, is this an occasion of 
lamentation for /lim. Death was not meant to be 
regarded as an evil, or else it would not come alike 
to all; and about Mr. "Webster's death there were 
many circumstances of felicity and good fortune. 
lie died in the maturity of his intellect ; after long 
public service, and after having achieved a great 
name for himself, and a great memory for his 
country. He died at home; his last wants suj> 
plied by the hands of affection; his last hours 
cheered by the consolations of friendship ; amidst 
those peaceful scenes which he had himself assisted 
to make beautiful, and within hearing of that ocean- 
anthem to which he always listened with emotions 
of gratitude and joy. He died, too, conscious of the 
wonderful growth and prosperity and glory of his 
native land. His eloquent prayer had been an- 
swered — the prayer which he breathed forth to 
Providence at the greatest era of his life, when he 
stood side by side with Andrew Jackson, and they 
both contended for what was, in their belief, the 
cause of the Constitution and the Union. 

I pause, Mr. Speaker, at the combination of those 
two names. Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster ! 
Daniel Webster and Andrew Jackson! "With the 
clear intellect and glorious oratory of the one, 
added to the intuitive sagacity and fate-like will of 
the other, I will not ask what icroixj is there which 



45 

tliey could not successfully crush, but what rhjld 
is there, rather, which could withstand their united 
power. 

"When my eyes," he said on that great occasion, 
" are turned to behold for the last time the sun in 
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken 
and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious Union ; 
on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a 
land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, 
with fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lin- 
gering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of 
the republic, now known and honored throughout 
the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and 
trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a 
stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, 
bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory 
as ' What is all this worth ?' — nor those other words 
of delusion and folly, ' Liberty first and union after- 
ward ;' but everywhere, spread all over in charac- 
ters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as 
they float over the sea and over the land, and in 
every wind under the whole heavens, that other 
sentiment, dear to every American heart, ' Liberty 
and union, now and for ever, one and inseparable.' " 
Sir, Mr. Webster outlived the crisis of 1830, and 
saw his country emerge in safety, also, from that 
later tempest of sectional disturbance, whose waters 
are even yet heaving with the swell of subdued, but 



46 

not exliausted passion. He left this nation great, 
prosperous, and happy ; and more than that, he left 
the Constitution and the Union in vigorous exist- 
ence, under Avhose genial influen€es all that glory, 
and prosperity, and happiness, he knew, had been 
achieved. To preserve them, he had risked -what 
few men have to risk — his reputation, his good name, 
his cherished friendships ; and if there be any who 
doubt the wisdom of his 7th of March speech, let 
them consider the value of these treasures, and they 
will at ieast give him credit for patriotism and sin- 
cerity. But I am unwilling, Mr. Speaker, to dwell 
upon this portion of his career. The fires of that 
crisis have subsided ; but their ashes are yet warui 
with recent strife. * What Mr. Webster did, and the 
other great men Avith whom he labored, to extin- 
guish those fires, has gone into the keeping of his- 
tor}^, and thejj have found their best reward in the 
continued safety of the republic. 

Our anxiety need not be for them. When the 
mariner is out upon the ocean, and sees, one by one, 
the lights of heaven go out before the rising storm, 
he does not ask what has become of those lights, or 
whether they shall renew their lustre ; but his in- 
quiry is, what is to become of me, and how am I to 
guide m}' bark in safety, after these natural pilots 
of the sky have disappeared. Yet even then, by 
consulting those calculations and directions, which 



47 

■wise and skilful men had prepared, when the light 
did shine, and there was no tempest raging upon the 
sea, he is enabled, it may be, to grope his way in 
safety to his desired port. And this, sir, is our con- 
solation upon occasions like the present one. Jack- 
son, and Calhoun, and Clay, and Wright, and Polk, 
and AVoodbur}-, and Webster, are indeed no more ; 
and if all that they thought, and said, and did — 
their wise conceptions, and their heroic deeds, and 
their bright examples — were buried with them, how 
terribly deepened would now be our sense of the 
nation's loss, and how much less hopeful the pros- 
pects of republican liberty. But it is not so. 
"A superior and commanding human intellect," 
(Mr. Webster has himself told us,) "a truly great 
man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a sift, is not 
a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and 
then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather 
a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, 
with power to enkindle the common mass of human 
mind ; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, 
and fnially goes out in death, no night follows, but 
it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the 
potent contact of its own spirit.'' No, sir, our great 
men do not wholly die. All that they achieved 
worthy of remembrance survives them. They live 
in their recorded actions ; they live in their bright 
examples; they live in the respect and gratitude 



48 

of mankind; and they live in that pecuhar in- 
fluence, by which one single commanding thought, 
as it runs along the electric chain of human 
afliiirs, sets in motion still other thoughts and in- 
fluences, in endless progression; and thus makes 
its author an active and powerful agent in the 
events of life, long after his mortal portion shall 
have crumbled in the tomb. 

Let us thank God for this immortality of worth, 
and rejoice in every example which is given to us 
of what our nature is capable of accomplishing. 
Let it teach us not despair, but courage, and lead 
us to follow in its light, at however great a dis- 
tance, and with however unequal steps. This is 
the lesson of wisdom, as well as of poetry. 

Lives of great men all remind us 

We can make our lives sublime ; 
And departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of Time. 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother, 

Seeing, may take heart again 

When God shall send liis Angel to 7(s, Mr. 
Speaker, bearing the scroll of death, may we be 
able to 1)0W our heads to his mission with as 



<p- 



49 

much of gentleness and resignation as marked the 
last hours of Da:s"iel Webster. 



MR. PRESTON. 

Mr. Speaker : — I have been requested, by some 
of the gentlemen who compose the delegation from 
my State, to make some remarks upon the subject 
of the message and resolutions received from the 
Senate, which have been laid upon your table this 
morning, in relation to the death of Mr. Webster. 
It was, in their opinion, peculiarly appropriate that 
Kentucky — a State so long associated with Massa- 
chusetts in political sympathy, as well as in recipro- 
cal admiration entertained for two of the most emi- 
nent men of their day — should come forward and 
add her testimonial of the esteem in which she held 
his life and great public services, and tliO regret she 
experienced at the calamity which has befallen the 
country. The mind naturally goes back, in looking 
over the great career of Daxiel Webster, to the 
period of his birth — seventy years ago. In the 
northern part of the State of New Hampshire, be- 
neath the roof of his pioneer father, the future 
statesman first drew the breath of life, and imbibed, 
amid its picturesque scenery and wild mountains, 
that freedom of thought, that dignity, and that in- 
tellectual health which left so indelible a mark upon 
his oratory and public career in after-life. No man 

4 



«- 



50 

lias earned a greater reputatiou, in the present time, 
in forensic endeavor, than Mr. Webster, nor any 
whose reputation could challenge comparison, unless 
it be one M'ho was also born in a similar obscure 
station of life, amid the marshes of Hanover, and 
whose future led him to cross the summit of the 
Appalachian range with the great tide of population 
which poured from Virginia upon the fertile plains 
of Kentucky. Their destiny has been useful, great, 
and brilliant. From that period to this, these cele- 
brated contemporaries have been conspicuous in the 
career of public utility to which they devoted their 
lives, and by their intellectual superiority and dig- 
nified statesmanship have commanded not only the 
respect of their several States, but of the nation and 
of mankind. For forty years they swayed the 
councils of their country, and the same year sees 
them consigned to the grave. The statesman of 
Ashland died in this city, before the foliage of sum- 
mer was sere, and was sent, with the honors of his 
country, back to the resting-place which he now oc- 
cupies in the home of his early adoption. The 
M'inds of autumn have swept the stem New England 
shores — the shores of Pl^'mouth, where the Pilgrim 
Fathers landed — and caught up the expiring breath 
of Daniel Webster as he terminated his life of 
honoralde service. The dirge that the night winds 
now utter through the pruneval forests of Ashland 
lament for one 3 the surges of the wintry ocean, as 



•w 



51 

they beat upon the shores of Marshficld, are a fit- 
ting requiem to the other. 

There are two points of particular prominence in 
the life of Webster to which I will allude. All 
remember the celebrated struggle of 1830. The 
greatest minds of the country, seeing the constitu- 
tional questions involved from different points of 
view, were embroiled in controversy. The darkest 
apprehensions were entertained. A gallant and gift- 
ed senator from South Carolina, (General Hayne,) 
with a 2;enius and fire characteristic of the land of 
his birth, had expressed the views of his party with 
great ability, and, as it was thought, with irresist- 
ible eloquence. The eyes of the country were di- 
rected to Webster as the champion of the Constitu- 
tion and the Union. Crowds of beautiful women 
and anxious men on that day thronged the other 
wing of this Capitol. What patriotic heart in the 
nation has yet forgotten that noble and memorable 
reply? A deep and enthusiastic sentiment of admi- 
ration and respect thrilled through the heart of the 
people, and even yet the triumph of that son of New 
England is consecrated in the memory of his coun- 
trjTiien. Subsequently, the Chief Magistrate of the 
Union, President Jackson, announced opinions of a 
similar character in his celebrated Proclamation, and 
men of all parties felt that a new rampart had been 
erected for the defence of the Constitution. 

At a period more recent, within the remembrance 



7 



52 

of all, Daniel "Webster again appeared in another 
critical emergency that imperilled the safety of the 
republic. It was the 7th of March, 1850. Ex- 
cited by the territorial question, the spirit of fana- 
ticism broke forth with feaiful violence from the 
North. But it did not shake his undaunted soul. 
He gazed with majestic serenity at the storm, and 
sublime in his self-reliance, as Virgil describes Me- 
zentius surromided by his enemies, 

He, like a solid rock by seas enclosed, 
To raging winds and roaring waves exposed, 
From his proud summit looking down, disdains 
Their empty menace, and unmoved remains. 



—6 



A great portion of the fame of Daniel Webster 
rests upon the events of that day, and his patriotism 
having endured the tempest, his reputation shone 
with fresh lustre after it had passed. Clay and 
Webster on that day stood linked hand-in-hand, 
and averted the perils that menaced their connnon 
country. In the last great act of their lives in the 
Senate, they drew closer the bonds of union between 
the North and South, like those lofty Cordilleras 
that, stretching along the Isthmus of Panama, bind 
in indissoluble bonds Northern and Southern Ame- 
rica, and alike beat back from their rocky sides the 
l\n-y of either ocean. These, Mr. Speaker, and gen- 
tlemen of the House, are the memories that make 



m- 



53 

us in our Western homes revere the names of Clay 
and Webster. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Davis,) 
in his eloquent tribute to the genius and fame of 
D^sjN'iEL Webster, has chosen to apply to him the 
remark by ■which Cicero characterizes Brutus — 
" Quidquid imit, valde vult" If he will pardon me, 
I think the description applied by the great orator 
whom he has quoted to Gracchus is more striking : 
^^ Eloquent la quidem nescio an habuisset jJcirem : gran- 
dis est verbis, sapiens sententiis, genere toto gravis" 
If, however, a resemblance prevailed in this respect 
between Caius Gracchus and Webster, it did not in 
others. Gracchus, as we are told, was the first Ro- 
man orator who turned his back to the capitol and 
his face to the people ; the popular orators of Rome, 
anterior to that time, havmg always turned their 
faces to the Senate and their backs to the Forum. 
Webster never sought to subvert the judgment of 
the people by inflaming their passions. His sphere 
was among men of intellect. His power was in 
convincino; the minds of the cultivated and intel- 
lectual, rather than by fervid harangues to sway the 
ignorant or excite the multitude. Clay — bold, bril- 
liant, and dashing, rushing at results with that intu- 
ition of common sense that outstrips all the pro- 
cesses of logic — always commanded the heart and 
directed the action of his party. Webster seemed 
deficient in some of these great qualities, but sur- 



54 

passed him in others. He appeared his natural 
auxiliary. Clay, the most brilliant parliamentary 
leader, and probably unequalled, save by the Earl of 
Chatham, whom he resembled, swept with the velo- 
city of a charge of cavalry on the ranks of his op- 
ponents, and often won the Aactory before others 
were prepared for the encounter. AVebstek, with his 
array of fticts, his power of statement, and logical 
deductions, moved forward like the disciplined and 
serried infantry, with the measured tread of delibe- 
rate resolution and the stately air of irresistible 

power. 

Daniel Webster is dead. He died without ever 
having been elevated to the Presidency of the na- 
tion. Camillus, the second founder of Rome, never 
enjoyed the Consulate; but he was not less illus- 
trious because he was not rewarded by the fasces 
and the consular purple. Before the lustre of Web- 
ster's renown, a merely presidential reputation nuist 
grow pale. lie has not only left a reputation of 
unsurpassed lustre in the Senate, but he will also 
pass down to posterity as the ablest and most pro 
found jurist of his day. As an orator, he had not. 
as has been correctly observed by a senator from 
New York, the vehemence of Demosthenes, nor the 
splendor of Cicero ; but still Daniel Webster was 
an orator — an orator marked by the characteristics 
of the Teutonic race — bold, massive, and replete 
with manly force and vigor. His writings are 



"® 



-i 



55 

marked by a deep philosophy which will cause 
them to be read Avhen the issues that evoked them 
have passed away, and ^he splendor of an imagina- 
tion, almost as rich as that of Burke, will invest 
them with attractions alike for the political scholar 
and the man of letters. 

We should not deplore the death of "Webster. It 
is true the star has shot from the sphere it illumi- 
nated, and is lost in the gloom of death; but he 
sank full of years and honors, after he had reached 
the verge of human life, and before his majestic in- 
tellect was dimmed or his body bowed down by 
old age. He did not sink into his grave, like Marl- 
borough, amid the mists of dotage ; but he went 
while his intellect was unclouded, and the literary 
remembrances of his youth came thronging to the 
dying bed of their votary. Naj^oleon, when he was 
expiring at St. Helena, muttered disconnected words 
of command and battle, that showed his turbulent 
mind still struggled in imaginary conflicts ; but gen- 
tler spirits brought to the death-bed of the states- 
man of Marshfield more consoling memories as he 
murmured, 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; 

and all the tender and mournful beauties of that 
inimitable elegy clustered around his soul. 

But, sir, I will not venture to say more on this 
theme. I have said thus much in the name of my 



56 

native State, to testify her veneration for worth, 
patriotism, and departed greatness, and to add with 
proper reverence a handful of earth to the mound 
a nation raises to the memory of the great secre- 
tary, and to say. Peace be to the manes of Weester. 

MR. SEYMOUR, of Kew York, said :— 

Mr. Speaker : — I rise in support of the resolu- 
tions offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts, 
and in that connection propose to submit a few 
remarks. 

Sir, our great men are the common property of 
the country. In the da^s of our prosperity, we 
boast of their genius and enterprise as they advance 
the general weal. In the hour of a nation's peril, 
the shadow of their great name is the gathering 
point, whither we all turn for guidance and defence ; 
and whether their laurels have been gathered on the 
battle-field, in sustainiiis; our riuhts a2:ainst hostile 
nations — in the halls of legislation, devising and 
enacting those wise and beneficent laws which, by 
de^•eloping the resources, instructing the mind, and 
directing the energies of the nation, may be traced 
on the frame-work of society long after their authors 
have ceased to exist — or in the temple of justice or 
the sacred desk, regulating the jarring elements of 
civil life, and making men happier and better — 
they are all parts of one grand exhibition, showing. 



57 

tlirougli all coming time, what the men of the pre- 
sent aire and of our nation have done for the eleva- 
tion and advancement of our race. To chronicle 
these results of human effort, and to transmit them 
to future ages, is the province of history. In her 
temple, the gi^eat and the good are embalmed. 
There they may be seen and read by all those who, 
in future generations, shall emulate their great 
deeds. Time, whose constant flow is continually 
obliterating and changing the physical and social 
relations of all things, cannot efface the landmarks 
which they have raised along the pathway of life. 
The processes b}' which they attained the grand re- 
sult, and the associations by wdiich they at the time 
were surrounded, are unknown or forgotten, while 
we contemplate the monuments which their genius 
and heroism have raised. 

Who. that reads the story of the battle of IMara- 
thon, bv which the liberties of Athens were rescued 
from Persian despotism, stops to inquire to what 
party in that republic Miltiades belonged ? Who 
that listens to the thunders of Demosthenes, as he 
moves all Greece to resist the common enemy, 
attempts to trace his political associations ? So it 
will be in the future of this republic. The battle 
of New Orleans will disclose Jackson, the hero and 
the patriot, saving his countrj^ from her enemies. 
The debates of the Senate Chamber will exhibit 



'§• 



58 

Clay, CiilliOLin, and Webster, illustrating and de- 
fending the great principles of our government by 
their lofty patriotism and eloquence. On neither 
picture will be observed whatever we of the present 
time may judge to have savored of the mere politi- 
cian and the partisan. We, from our near proxi- 
mity, may see, or think we see, the ill-shapen rocks 
and the unseemly caverns which disfigure the sides 
of these mighty Alpine peaks. Future ages will 
only descry their ever-gilded summits. 

Who, then, shall lightly say that Fame 

Is but an empty name ? 

AVhcn, but for these our mighty dead, 

All ages past a blank would be, 
Sunk in Oblivion's murky bed — 

A desert bare — a shipless sea. 
They are the distant objects seen, 
The. lofty marks of what hath been; 

"Where memory of the mighty dead, 
To earth-worn pilgrims' wistful eye 

The brightest rays of cheering shed 
That point to immortality. 

^ir, I shall not attempt here to even bricily re- 
view the public life or delineate the true character 
of l)AMi;r, Wkbstki;. That public life, extending 
through more than forty years of the growth and 
progress of our countrv, will doubtless be sketched 
by those of his compeers who have shared with him 



•• 



59 

in liLS public service. That character, too, will best 
be di'a^^ai by those intimate friends who knew him 
best, and who enjoyed the most favourable opportu- 
nities for observing the operations of his giant 
mind. 

Li looking at what he has achieved, not only in 
the fields of legislation, but in those of literature 
and jurisprudence, I may say he has left a monu- 
ment of his industry and genius of which his 
countrymen may well be proud. His speeches in 
the Senate and b.efore the assemblies of the people, 
and his arguments before our highest courts, taken 
tocfether, form the most valuable contribution to 
American literature, language, and oratory, which 
it has been the good fortune of any individual to 
have yet made. Were I to attempt it, I should be 
unable to determine on which of the varied scenes 
of his labors his genius and talents stood pre- 
eminent. 

Ilis argument in the Dartmouth College case has 
e\'er been regarded as a model of forensic debate, 
exhibiting the rare combination of the dry logic of 
the law with the tender, the beautiful, and the 
sublime. His address before the Historical Societj^ 
of New York not only exhibited a thorough ac- 
quaintance with ancient and modern literature, but 
was itself a gem whose brilliancj^ will never cease 
to attract even by the side of the great lights of the 



CO 

literary world. TJic speech in the Senate in reply to 
Hayne, by its powerful argumentation, its sublimity, 
and patriotic fervor, placed him at once, by the 
common consent of mankind, in the front rank of 
orators. 

But I cannot on this occasion re^'iew a life re- 
plete with incidents at once evincing the workings 
of a great mind, and marking important events in 
the histor}^ of the country. I can here only speak 
of his labors collectivel3^ They were the result 
of great effort — grand in their conception, effec- 
tive in their execution, and permanent in their 
influences. 

As a son of his native New England, I am proud 
to refer back to the plain and unostentatious man- 
ners, the rigid discipline, and the early and 
thorough mental training, to be found among the 
yeomanrj^ of that part of our country, as con- 
tributing primarily to the eminent success of Mr. 
"Webster in the business of his life. Bom, reared, 
and educated among the granite hills of New 
Hampshire, although his attachments to the place 
of his birth were strong to the last, yet, upon the 
bruad theatre upon which he was called to act his 
part as a public man. his sympathies and his pa- 
trioti.^m were bounded only by the confmes of the 
whole republic. 

Although, in common with many of us, I differed 






61 

ill opinion from the late Secretary of State upon 
grave political questions, yet, with the great mass 
of our fellow-citizens, I aclaiowledge his patriotism, 
and the force and ability with which he sustained 
his own opinions. However we may view those 
opinions, one thing will be conceded by all : his 
feelings were thoroughly American, and his aim 
the good of his country. In his whole public life, 
and by his greatest efforts as an orator, he has left 
deeply impressed on the American mind one great 
truth, never to be forgotten — the lyreservation of 
American liberty depends upon Hie support of the 
Chnstitution and tlw Union of the States. To have 
thus linked his name indissolubly with the per- 
petuity of our institutions is enough of glory for 
any citizen of the republic. 

MR. CHANDLER said:— 

Mr. Speaker : — The selection of the present 
time to make special and official reference to the 
death of Mr. Webster may be regarded as fortunate 
and judicious. An earlier moment would have ex- 
posed our eulogies to those exaggerations M'hich, 
while they do justice in some measure to the feelings 
whence they spring, are no proofs of sound judg- 
ment in the utterer, nor sources of honor to their 
lamented object. The great departed owe little to 
the record of their worth, which is made in the 



62 

midst of sudden emotions, -when the freshness of 
personal intercourse mingles with recollections of 
public virtues, and the object, obseryed through the 
tears of recent sorrow, bears with it the prismatic 
hues which distort its fair proportions, and hide 
that simplicity which is the characteristic of true 
greatness. And equally just is it to the dead 
whom we would honor, and to our feeUngs which 
would promote that honor, that we have not post- 
poned the season to a period when time would so 
have mitigated our just regret as to direct our 
eulogies only to those lofty points of Mr. "Webster's 
character which strike but from afar; which owe 
their distinction less to their affinities vdih public 
sympathy than to their elevation above ordinary 
ascent, and ordinary computation. 

That distance, too, in a government like ours, is 
dangerous to a iust homaae to the distinixuished 
dead, however willing may be the sur^^vor; for 
smaller objects intervene, and by proximity hide 
the proportions which we sun-ey from afar, and 
diminish that just appreciation which is necessary 
to the honorable praise that is to perpetuate public 
fame. 

Mr. Webster was a distinguished statesman, 
tried, sir, in nearly all the various positions whicli 
in our government the civilian is called on to fill, 
and in all these places the powers of a gifted mind, 



•*) 



63 



strengthened and improved by a practical educa- 
tion, were the great means by which he achieved 
success, and patriotism the motive of their devotion. 
With all Mr. Webster's professional greatness, with 
all his unrivalled powers in the Senate, with his 
great distinction as a diplomatist, he was fond of 
credit as a scholar; and his attainments, if not of 
the kind which gives eminence to merely literary 
men, were such as gave richness and terseness to 
his own composition, and vigor and attraction to his 
conversation. His mind was moulded to the strong 
conception of the epic poet, rather than the gentle 
phrase of the didactic; and his preference for na- 
tural scenery seemed to partake of his literary 
taste — it was for the strong, the elevated, the grand. 
His childhood and youth joyed in the rough sides of 
the mountains of New Hampshire, and his age 
found a delightful repose on the wild shores of 
Massachusetts bay. He was a lover of Nature, not 
in her holiday suit of field and flower, but in those 
wild exhibitions of broken coast and isolated hills, 
that seem to stir the mind into activity, and pro- 
voke it into emulation of the grandeur with whicli 
it is surrounded. Yet, sir, Mr. Webster had with 
him much of the gentleness which gives Ix^auty to 
social life, and diornitv and attraction to the do- 
mestic scene, iust as the rueired coast is often 
as placid as the gentlest lake, and the summit of 



64 

the roughest hill is frequently bathed in the softest 
sunlight, and clad in flowers of the most delicate 
hues. Mr. Webster's person was strongly indica- 
tive of the character of his mind; not formed for 
the lighter graces, but graceful in the noblest uses 
of manhood; remarkable in the stateliness of its 
movements, and dignified in the magnificence of 
its repose. Mr. "Webster could scarcely pass un- 
noticed, even where unknown. There was that in 
his mien which attracted attention, and awakened 
interest ; and his head (whether his countenance 
was liglited by a smile, such as only he could give, 
or fixed by contemplation, such as only he could 
indulge) seemed an 

arcL'd and ponderous roof, 
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable, 
Looking tranquillity! 

"With all Mr. Webster's lofty gifts and attain- 
ments, he was amhithus. Toiling upward from 
the base of the political ladder, it is not to be de- 
nied that he desired to set his ftx)t upon the upmost 
round. This could not have been a thirst for 
power : nothing of a desire for the exercise of abso- 
lute authority could have been in that aspiration ; 
for the only absolute power left (if any be left) by 
the Constitution in the Executive of this nation is 
"mercy." In Mr. Webster it wii^j the distinction 



-9 



65 

which the place conferred, and the sphere of use- 
fulness it presented. He regarded it as the crown- 
ing glory of his public life — a glory earned by his 
devotion of unparalleled talents and unsurpassed 
statesmanship. This ambition in Mr. Webster was 
modesty. He could not see, as others saw and 
felt, that no political elevation was necessary to 
the completion of his fame or the distinction of his 
statesmanship. It was not for him to understand 
that the last round of political preferment, honor- 
able as it is, and made more honorable by the 
lustre which purity of motive, great talents, and 
devoted patriotism are now shedding down upon 
it — he could not understand that preferment, honor- 
able as it is, was unnecessary to him ; that it could 
add nothing to his political stature, nor enlarge the 
horizon of his comprehensive views. It is the 
characteristic of men of true greatness, of exalted 
talents, to comprehend the nature and power of 
the gifts they possess. That, sir, is an homage to 
God, who bestows them. But it is also their mis- 
fortune to be dissatisfied with the means and op- 
portunities they have possessed to exercise those 
gifts to great national purposes. This is merely 
distrust of themselves. The world, sir, compre- 
hends the uses of the talents of great statesmen, 
and gives them credit for their masterly powers, 
without asking that those pcjwers should be tried 



■» 



C6 

in every position in -wliich public men may be 
placed. 

I see not in all the character, gifts, and attain- 
ments of Mr. Webster, any illustration of the Bri- 
tish orator's exclamation, relative to " the shadows 
which we are ;" nor do I discover in the splendid 
career and the aims of his lofty ambition any thing 
to prove " what shadows we pursue." 

The life of such a man as Daxiel Webster is 
one of solid greatness; and the objects he pursued 
are worthy of a being made in the image of God. 
A life of honorable distinction is a substantive and 
permanent object. The good of man, and the true 
glory and happiness of his country, are the sub- 
stantial things, the record of which generation 
hands down to generation, inscribed with the name 
of him that pursued them. 

I will not, sir, trespass on this House by any at- 
tempt to sketch the character, or narrate the ser- 
vices of Mr. Webster; too manv will have a share 
in this day's exercises to allow one speaker so ex- 
tensive a range. It is enough for me, if, in obeying 
the indications of others, I give to my cfibrt the 
tone of respect with which the statesman and the 
patriot, Webster, was regarded, as avcU by the 
nation at lar^c as by those whom I have the honor 
to represent on this Hour. And in the remarks of 
those whose means -of judging have been better 



»- 



67 

than mine, will be found his characteristics of social 
and domestic life. 

How keenly Mr. "Webster relished the relaxa- 
tions which public duties sometimes allowed, I had 
an opportunity of judging; for he loved to call to 
my recollections scenery which had been familiar 
to me in childhood, as it was lovely to him in age. 
The amusements, in which he gratified a manly 
taste in the midst of that scenery, were promotive 
of physical recuperation, rendered necessary by the 
heavy demands of professional or official life. He 
was stimulated to thought by the activity which 
the pursuits on land required, or led to deep con- 
templation by the calmness of the ocean on which 
he rested. Though dying in office, Mr. Webster 
was permitted to breathe his last in those scenes 
made classical to others by liis uses, and dear to 
him by their ministrations to, and correspondence 
with, his taste. 

The good of his country undoubtedly occupied 
the last moments of his ebbimr life ; but those mo- 
ments were not disturbed by the immediate press- 
ure* of official duties; and in the dignity of do- 
mestic quiet, he passed onward; and while at a 
distance communities awaited in grief and awe the 
signal of his departure, the deep diapason of the 
Atlantic wave, as it broke upon his own shore, was 
a fitting requiem for such a parting spirit. 



-^ 



68 

MR. BAYLY, of Virginia, remarked: — 

I had been, sir, nearly two years a member of 
Congress before I made Mr. Webster's acquaintance. 
About that time a proceeding was instituted here, 
of a delicate character so far as he was concerned, 
and incidentally conceraing an eminent constituent 
and friend of mine. This circumstance first brought 
me into intercourse with Mr. Webster. Subse- 
quentl}^, I transacted a good deal of official business 
with him, some of it also of a delicate character. I 
thus had unusual opportunities of fofming an opi- 
nion of the man. The acquaintance I made with 
him, under the circumstances to which I have re- 
ferred, rijDcned into friendship. It is to these cir- 
cumstances that I, a political opponent, am indebted 
for the honor, as I esteem it, of having been re- 
quested to say something on this occasion. 

From my early manhood, of course, sir, I have 
been well acquainted with Mr. Webster's public 
character, and I had formed my ideal of him as a 
man; and what a misconception of it was that 
ideal ! Rarely seeing him in public places, in fami- 
liar hitercourse with his friends, contemplating his 
grave statue-like appearance in the Senate and 'the 
Forum, I had formed the conception that he was a 
frigid iron-bound man, whom few could approach 
without constraint; and I undertake to say that — 
\intil of late years, in which, through personal 
sketches of him by his friends, the public has be- 



■» 



•/« 



69 

come acquainted with his private character — such 
was the idea most persons who knew him only as I 
did formed of him. Yet, sir, what a misconception ! 
No man could appreciate Mr. Webster who did not 
know him privately. No man could appreciate him 
who did not see him in fiimiliar intercourse with his 
friends, and especially around his own fireside and 
table. There, sir, he was confiding, gay, and some- 
times downright boyish. Full of racy anecdote, he 
told them in the most captivating manner. 

Who that ever heard his description of men and 
things can ever forget them? Mr. Webster, sir, 
attached a peculiar meaning to the ■word^ialk, and 
in his sense of the term he liked to talk ; and who 
that ever heard him talk can forget that talk? 
Sometimes it was the most playful wit, then the 
most pleasing philosophy. Mr. Webster, sir, owed 
his greatness, to a large extent, to his native gifts. 

Among his contemporaries there were lawyers 
more learned, yet he was, by common consent, as- 
signed the first place at the American bar. As a 
statesman, there were those more thoroughly in- 
formed than he, yet what statesman ranked him ? 
Among orators there were those more graceful and 
impressive, yet what orator was greater than he ? 
There were scholars more ripe, yet who wrote better 
Endish? The characteristics of his mind were 
massive strength and classic beauty combined, with 
a rare felicity. His favorite studies, if I may judge 



«■ 



-* 



70 

from liis conversatious, -were the history and the 
Constitution of liis own country, and the history 
and the Constitution of England; and I undertake 
to say that there is not now a man living who was 
more perfectly familiar with both. His favorite 
amusements, too, if I may judge in the same way, 
were field-sports and out-door exercise. I have fre- 
quently heard Mr. Webster say, if he had been a 
merchant, he would have been an out-door partner. 
]Mr. Webster was, as all great men are, eminently 
magnanimous. As proof of this, see his whole life, 
and especially that crowning act of magnanimity 
— his let(^r to Mr. Dickinson. Mr. Webster had 
no envy or jealousy about him — as no great man 
ever had. Conscious of his own powers, he envied 
those of no one else. Mr. Calhoun and himself en- 
tered public life about the same time ; each of them 
strove for the first honors of the republic. They 
were statesmen of rival schools. They frequently 
met in the stern encounter of debate, and when they 
met the conflict was a conflict of giants. Yet how 
delightful it w^as to hear Mr. Webster speak, as I 
have heard him speak, in the most exalted terms of 
Calhoun ; and how equally delightful it was to hear 
Mr. Calhoun, as I have heard him, speak in like 
terms of Webster. On one occasion, Mr. Calhoun, 
speaking to me of the characteristics of Webster as 
a debater, said that lie was remarkable in this — that 
he always stated the argument of his antagonist 



71 

fairly, and boldly met it. He said lie had even 
seen him state the argument of his opponent more 
forcibly than his opponent had stated it himself; 
and, if he could not answer it, he would never un- 
dertake to weaken it by misrepresenting it. What 
a compliment was this, coming, as it did, from his 
great rival in constitutional law ! I have also heard 
Mr. Calhoun say that Mr. Webster tried to aim at 
truth more than any statesman of his day. 

A short time since, Mr. Speaker, w^hen addressing 
the House, at the invitation of the delegation from 
Kentucky, on the occasion of Mr. Clay's death, I 
used this language : 

" Sir, it is but a short time since the American 
Congress buried the first one that went to the grave 
of that great triumvirate, (Calhoun.) We are now 
called upon to bury another, (Clay.) The third, 
thank God ! still lives ; and long may he live to en- 
lighten his countrymen by his wisdom, and set them 
the example of exalted patriotism. [Alas! how 
little did I think, when I uttered these words, that 
my wish was so soon to be disappointed.] Sir, in 
the lives and characters of these great men there is 
much resembling those of the great triumvirate of 
the British Parliament. It diilers principally in 
this: Burke preceded Fox and Pitt to the tomlj. 
Webster survives Clay and Calhoun. When Fox 
and Pitt died, they left no peer behind them. Web- 
ster still lives, now that Calhoun and Clay are dead, 



®- 



72 

tlie unrivalled statesman of his country. Like Fox 
and Pitt, Clay and Calhoun lived in troubled times. 
Like Fox and Pitt, they were each of them the 
leader of nval parties. Like Fox and Pitt, they 
were idolized by their respective friends. Like Fox 
and Pitt, they died about the same time, and in the 
public service; and, as has been said of Fox and 
Pitt, Clay and Calhoun died with 'their harness 
upon them.' Like Fox and Pitt — 

With more than mortal powers endow* d, 
How high they soar'd above the crowd ; 
Theirs was no common party race, 
Jostling by dark intrigue for place — 
Like fabled gods their mighty war 
Shook realms and nations in its jar. 
Beneath each banner, proud to stand, 
Look'd up the noblest of the land. 

Here let their c?iscord with fJicm die. 
Speak not for those a separate doom 
"Whom fate made brothers in the tomb; 
But search the land of livint? men, 
Where wilt thou find their like again ?" 

I may reproduce, on this occasion, with propriety, 
what I then said, w^ith the addition of the names of 
Burke and Webster. The parallel that I undertook 
to run on that occasion, by the aid of a poet, was not 
designed to be perfect, yet it might be strengthened 
by lines from another poet. For though Webster's 
enemies must admit, as Burke's satirist did, that — 

Too fond of the rijht, to pursue the acjtedicnt, 



J 



.« 



73 

yet, what satirist, with the last years of "Webster's 
life before him, will undertake to shock the public 
sentiment of America by saying, as was unjustly 
said of Burke by his satirist — 

Born for the universe, be narrow'd his mind, 

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 

Mr. Speaker, during the brief period I have served 
with you in this House, what sad havoc has Death 
made among the statesmen of our republic ! Jack- 
son, Wright, Polk, McDuffie, and Sergeant, in pri- 
vate life, and Woodbury, from the bench, have gone 
to the tomb ! We have buried in that short time 
Adams, Calhoun, Taylor, and Clay, and we are now 
called on to pay the last tribute of our respect to 
the memory of Daniel Webster. Well may I ask, 
in the language of the poem already quoted — 

"Where wilt thou find their like again ? 

There was little, I fear, in the history of the lat- 
ter days of some of those great men to whom I have 
alluded to inspire the young men of our country to 
emulate them in the labors and sacrifices of public 
life. Yet there never was a time when there was a 
stronger obligation of patriotic duty on us to emu- 
late them in that respect than now. 

They followed one race of revolutionary states- 
men — they were the second generation of statesmen 



fe= 



-8 



74 

of our country'. "With one or two brilliant excei> 
tions/tliat second generation has passed awa}*, and 
those that now have charge of public affairs, with 
the exceptions referred to, are emphatically new 
men, God grant we have the patriotism to follow 
liiithfully in the footsteps of those who preceded us ! 



MR. STANLEY said :— 

Mr. Speaker : — I feel that it is proper and be- 
coming in me, as the representative of a people who 
claim the reputation of D-Vniel Webster as part of 
their most valuable property, to add a few words to 
what has been already said. I do not think that it 
is necessary to his fume to do so. I have no idea of 
attempting a eulogy on Daniel "Webster. It would 
be f)resumptuous to attempt it. Long before my 
entrance into public life, I heard from an illustrious 
citizen of my native State, (the late Judge Gaston.) 
that Mr. Webster, who was his contemporary in 
Congress, gave early indication of the wonderful 
abilities which he afterward displayed. There 
were giants in the land in those days, and by 
them AVebster was regarded as one who would 
earn great distinction. Before he reached the 
heiaht of his fame the vounr:: men in our land had 
been taught to respect him. This was the feeling 
of tlioso Avlio came forward on the stage of life with 
mo. Ill wluit language, then, can I express my ad- 
miration of those splendid abilities which have do- 



75 

lighted and instructed his countrymen, and charmed 
the lovers of republican government througliout the 
earth ? How shall I find fitting terms to speak of 
his powers in conversation — his many good qualities 
in social life^his extraordinary attainments — his 
exalted patriotism ? Sir, I shrink from the task. 

Gifted men from the pulpit, eloquent senators at 
home and in the Senate, orators in Northern and 
Southern and Western States, have gratified the pu}> 
lie mind by doing honor to his memory. To follow 
in a path trodden by so many superior men requires 
more boldness than I possess. But I cannot forbear 
to say that we North Carolinians sympathize with 
Massachusetts in her loss. We claim him as our 
Webster, as we do the memories of her great men 
of the Revolution. Though he has added glory to 
the bright name of Massachusetts, he has been the 
defender of that Constitution which has surrounded, 
with impregnable bulwarks, the invaluable blessings 
of civil liberty. When he made Massachusetts 
hearts throb with pride that she had such a man to 
represent her in the councils of the nation, we, too, 
felt proud at her joy, for her glory is our glory. 

Faneuil Hall is in Boston, and Boston in Ma>:.--a- 
chusetts; but the fame of those whose eloquence 
from those walls fanned the fire of liberty in the 
hearts of American patriots, and made tyrants trem- 
ble on their thrones, is the fame of the American 
people. 



-9 



76 

Fanueil Hall ! Daxiel Webster ! What glorious 
associations do these words recall ! 

The American patriot who hereafter performs his 
pilgrimage to that time-honored Hall, and looks at 
his portrait, appropriately placed there, will involun- 
tarily repeat what the poet said of the Webster of 
poets: 

Here Nature listening stood, while Shakspeare play'd, 
And wonder'd at the work herself had made. 

Daniel Webster was to the revolutionary patriots 
of Massachusetts, to the founders of our Constitution 
in the Old Thirteen States, what Homer was to the 
ancient heroes. Their deeds would have lived with- 
out him. Their memories would have been che- 
rished by their countrymen had Webster never 
spoken. But who can say that his mighty ability, 
his power of language, unequalled throughout the 
world — who can say he has not embalmed their 
memories, painted their deeds in beautiful drapery, 
and by the might of his genius held them up in cajv 
tivating form to his countrymen ? Who is there on 
the habitable c;lobe, wherever man is strufrdinc: for 
freedom, wherever Washington's name is heard and 
reverenced — who is there who will ever read the 
history of those immortal men who achieved our 
liberties, and founded with almost supernatural wis- 
dom our Constitution and republican form of govcrn- 



Ni 



77 

ment — who can ever read the history of these great 
men without saying, they achieved much, they per- 
formed great and noble deeds, but Webster's oratory 

has emblazoned them to the world, and erected 

« 

monuments to their memories more enduring than 
marble ? Can man aspire to higher honor than to 
have his name associated with such men? This 
honor, by universal consent, Dajs'iel Webster, the 
son of a New Hampshire farmer, has secured. 
Wherever liberty is prized on earth, in whatever 
quarter of the globe the light of our "great republic" 
is seen, sending its cheering beams to the heart of 
the lonely exile of oppression — in that land, and to 
that heart, will the name of Webster be held in 
grateful remembrance. As we cannot think of 
the founders of our republic without thinking of 
Webster, we cannot speak of his services properly 
except in his own words. How many of us, in and 
out of Congress, since his death, have recalled his 
memorable words, in his eulogium on Adams and 
Jefferson. Hear him in that discourse : 

"Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. 
As human beings, indeed, they are no more. They 
are no more, as in 177G, bold and fearless advocates 
of independence J no more, as on subsequent periods, 
the head of the government ; no more, as we have 
recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of 
admiration and regard. They are no more. They 
are dead. But how little is there of the izreat and 



78 

good which can die ! To their country they yet 
live, and live for ever. They live in all that per- 
petuates the remembrance of men on earth ; in the 
recorded proofs of their great actions; in the off- 
spring of their intellect ; in the deep and grave lines 
of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage 
of mankind. They live in their example; and they 
live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which 
their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, 
now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the 
affairs of men, not only in their country, but through- 
out the civilized world. A superior and commanding 
liuman intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven 
vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burn- 
ing bright for a while, and then expiring, giving place 
to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent 
heat as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle 
the common mass of human mind ; so that when it 
glimmers in its own decay, and linally goes out in 
death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all 
light, all on Are, from the potent contact of its own 
spirit. Bacon died, but the human understanding, 
roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a 
perception of the true i)liilosopliy, and the just mode 
of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course, suc- 
cessfully and gloriously. Newton died, yet the 
f(jurses of the spheres are still known, and they yet 
move on in the orljits which he saw, and described 
for tliem in the infinity of space." 



-0 



79 

Who can hear these words without feeling how 
appropriate and applicable to the great American 
statesman? To his country he "still lives," and 
will live for ever. 

Mr. Speaker, I fear to go on. The thoughts 
which are in my mind are not worthy of the great 
subject. I have read and heard so much from the 
able, learned, and eloquent of our land in his 
praise, I shrink from attempting to add any thing 
more. 

In justice to the feelings of those I represent, I 
felt solicitous to cast my pebble on the pile which 
was erecting to his memory. They venerate his 
memory, not only for those services to which I have 
referred, but also for his later exhibitions of patriot- 
ism, in stemming the torrent of temporary excite- 
ment at home. The year 1852, Mr. Speaker, will 
long be memorable in the annals of our country. 
In this year, three great lights of our age and our 
country have gone out. But a few months since, the 
voice of lamentation was heard from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific shore that Henry Clay was no more. 
The sounds of sorrow had scarcely died in our ears, 
when inexorable Death, striking with remorseless 
hand at the cottage of the peasant and the palace 
of the great — Death, as if to send terror to our souls 
by showing us that the greatest in place and in ge- 
nius are but men — has destroyed all that was mor- 
tal of Daniel Webster. 



«- 



80 

And even while vre were celebrating his obse- 
quies, the sagacious statesman, the wise counsellor, 
the pure and upright man, John Sergeant, of Penn- 
sylvania — the man who more happily combined the 
suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re than any 
public man I ever met with — the model of that best 
of all characters, a Christian gentleman, always lov- 
ing "whatsoever things are true, honest, just, lovely, 
and of good report," — John Sergeant is called to that 
beatific vision reserved for "the pure in heart." 

Let it be our pleasure, as it will be our duty, to 
teach those who come after us to imitate the private 
virtues, remember the public services, and cherish 
the reputation of these illustrious men. And while 
we do this, let us cherish, with grateful remem- 
brance and honest pride, the thought that these 
great men were not only lovers of liberty, friends of 
republican institutions, and patriots devoted to the 
service of their country, but that they were, Mith 
sincere conviction, believers in the Christian reli- 
gion. Without this praise, the Corinthian column 
of their characters would be deprived at once of the 
chief ornament of its capital and the solidity of its 
base. 

I fervently hope the lessons we have had of the 
certainty of death will not be lost ui)on us. ]Ma}' 
they make us loss fond of the pleasures of this 
world, so rapidl\- passing away ! May they cause 
those who are in high places of trust and honor to 



(f f) 

81 

remember, now in the days of health, manhood, and 
prosperity, that 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Await alike th' inevitable hour — 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave ! 

MR. TAYLOR, of Ohio, said :— 

Mr. Speaker: — In the Congress of 1799, when 
the announcement of the death of General Washing- 
ton was made in this body, appropriate resolutions 
were passed to express the high appreciation of the 
representatives of the people of the pre-eminent 
public services of the Father of his Country, and 
profound grief for their loss. His death was con- 
sidered a great national calamity ; and in the beau- 
tiful and appropriate language of General Henry 
Lee, who prepared the resolutions introduced by 
John Marshall, he was proclaimed as having been 
" First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts 
of his countrymen." The whole nation cordially 
responded to that sentiment ; and from that day to 
this, the high eulogium has been adopted by the 
people of the United States of America, as the just 
and expressive tribute to the greatest man, take him 
all in all, that our country had then or has since 

produced. Time rolled onj and the sentiment of 

6 



■# 



82 

his own coantiv bas. of late years, become the intel- 
ligent opinioa of the whole world. And in proof of 
-lis I misht cite, amonz others, the deliberately 
recorded opinions of the late Premier Guizot, cf 
Franc-e, and the great, thoush eccentric writer ani 
statesman. Broiighamj of England, men of vast 
celebritv. 

Our coantrv. then in its in&ncj, has grown up yl 
little inirr ihan half a centnry, to be the first re- 
public in the world, having increased from three or 
; . Lz iiillions to nearly twenty-five millions of inha- 
bitants, and extending from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific Ocean, During the present year, the nation 
has been called upon to mourn the death of two of 
her distinguiiheii citizens ; two men bom since the 
establishment of our independence, cradled in the 
Pkevolntioa, and brought up, as it were, at the feet 
:f :he fathers of the republic, whoee long public 
_ - '-1- ittr^cted to them and all that concerned 
ihem. more than to any others, the admiration, the 
m -i the hope of the whole people. These 

-_^_'_ Henry Clay and Da>tex Wzbstzb — have 

both been gathered to their fathers during the pre- 
sent year. When, during our last session, the offi- 
cial aimoancement was made in this House of the 
death of Henrv Clav. I listened with heartfelt svm- 
pathy to the eloquent and beautiful eulogies then 
pronounced upon Lis character, and felt in the ful- 






83 



of Bj Ikeart the traoi ^eL As 
r^iresentatives of the great «i_ _ 
^ Ohio «i this floor. I deaied them :. : — .-. :n" 
hmnMe voice T-!:h ti:-- who eizrr." r:^_: 
honcr his memcrv. li^ii no (^jpcsxiniiiT was ^ 
f<Kded me, and I cxili cmlv jom idih - :: 

spirit and a bowed i^ _ ^ 

hoDOTS which were It :: "-i.e 

by GxigTess. Ado. I 0-1^7 ~:~ irfire to sat. i_i, 
no Sii'r in "-^is Unian. iK>i " 



c • c_ 



-^1^ - 



the Gc^iii 01 Mr. Cliv. i:ir :i " . . i- - ■ — r*i- 

1I.JJ1 the Stale of 0-. — ti-e ^ zireni:^- 

of her citizens, witLont distinctSc-ii c«f Ttarty. in the 
citv in wnich I itside, ani ziir ~ 



- ir- 



State, expressed- in aprr-:tm:r 

---■ • _ "1-*- -i— , - 

tnrir mm estnnaie ci. n> i-^r^. - 



noes, az-d 



•-. - '■ n:~. sir. since the .. - .—nzi^n: :i .-nj7>Eiss. 
at its iist sessizn. he "srh; i-i-cj^rated "«rith Mr 
Clav in the lezis.ative an:L executive ^nts. 

at various tim^. ::r nearlj f;rtv ye its. :.n- :: 
whom, wtth his irreat c > tJi5Ji to any 

others, th- ..._„^ .- - . ::r se:n- 

ritv and ^ : — _e. too. has paid die debi oi EAt-ir-. 
and will ikever n :>? le f^een ainoB* i^ai. The 
ibnnal aniK : in this bo(fy of the death c : 
Dv\-T- Wl. 1 just and eioquen: 



84 

tributes to his memorj', and brings freshly to our 
view the beautiful traits of his private character, 
and his great and long-continued public services in 
the Senate and in one of the executive depart- 
ments of the government. In all that is said in 
commendation of the private virtues and pre-emi- 
nent public services of Daniel Webster, I heartily 
concur ; and I wish, sir, that I could find words 
sufficiently strong and appropriate to express what, 
in my judgment, were the great claims of these two 
eminent men upon the admiration and upon the 
gratitude of their countrymen. They were in 
many respects exemplars for the young men of our 
country-. Born (without any of the advantages con- 
ferred sometimes by wealth and position) in humble 
life ; struggling with adversities in their earlier 
years ; triumphing over all obstacles by their native 
strength of intellect, by their genius, and by their 
persevering indu^tr}- and great energy, they placed 
themselves in the very first rank of American 
statesmen, and for more than forty years were the 
great leaders of the American mind, and among 
the bri<i;htest guardians of their common countrv. 

Sir, it was my good fortune to have known, for 
many years, both these great patriots, and to have 
enjoyed their friendship ; and I think I but express 
the general sentiment of the intelligent jx'ople of 
this great country when I say that our country is, 



f 

85 

ill a very large degree, indebted to them for its pre- 
sent unexampled prosperity; for its peace and do- 
mestic happiness; and for its acknowledged power 
and high renown all over the world. In my judg- 
ment, the words of the national legislature, so beau- 
tifully and aptly embodying the true character of 
the Father of his Country, were not more appropri- 
ately uttered then in reference to him than they 
might be applied now, so far as relates to the civil 
affairs and action of our government within the last 
forty years, to Henry Clay and Daniel Webster ; 
and it may be properly said of them, that within 
that time they have been, emphatically, " First in 
war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of their 
countrymen." But, sir, the great men of a country 
must die ; and, if the great men of a country are 
pre-eminently good men, their loss is the more se- 
verely felt. Nothing human is perfect ; and I am 
far from believing, much less from asserting, that 
the eminent men of whom I have spoken were with- 
out defects of character. But I believe their vir- 
tues so far outweighed the imperfections of their 
nature, that to dwell upon such defects, on this occa- 
sion, would be as unprofitable and futile as to object 
to the light, and heat, and blessings of the glorious 
sun, guided by the Omnipotent hand, because an 
occasional shadow or spot may be seen on his disk. 
These guardians of our country have passed away ; 
but their works and good examples are left for our 



1 



m- 



86 

guidance, and are part of the lasting and valued 
possessions of this nation. And, !Mr. Speaker, 

"When the bright guardians of a country die, 
The grateful tear in tenderness will start ; 

And the keen anguish of a reddening eye 
Disclose the deep affliction of the heart. 



The question was put, and the resolutions were unani- 
mously adopted ; and 

The House adjourned till to-morrow at twelve o'clock m. 



THE END. 



'# 



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